Final Preperations before leaving for China

With three days left till departure, we are in a daze with all the preparations. Thank you to those who have posted encouraging comments. The biggest challenge has been to get the finances for this. We have received checks in the mail from family and friends to assist. Thank you so very much. The second big challenge is to keep our baggage weight at right around 40 lbs, given all the things we must take. At the bottom of our blog here, you can check the weather for the 3 locations in China we will be at. Also, I will be using AOL Instant messenger in China. The IDs we use on AOL/IM are " kenaniah1 " and " kenatiml ". Keep in mind the time difference in China. There is only one timezone for all of China. We also will be checking our normal e-mail for those of you who have the addresses. We have another member of our travel group posting a blog at http://builtbygod.blogspot.com/ for those of you who may be interested. One week from tomorrow and we will have MeiLi!

First Stop - Beijing

北京-紫禁城- 长城- 颐和园

Sept. 3 (Wed night) -We arrive in Beijing & we wait to join up with the other adopting families.

Sept. 4 (Thu) - Settle into Hotel, get used to new time zone, meet other families, venture out into the city.

Sept. 5 (Fri) --- Visit Tian’an men Square and Forbidden City.

Sept. 6 (Sat) --- Visit the Great Wall and Summer Palace.

It will be fun watching Karah experience her own culture. She's five now so she will remember a lot from this trip.

Flight Paths

Karah's "Forever Family Day" Anniversary

On August 23rd, we celebrate the 4th anniversary of meeting Karah. I could write the story but in this case a picture is worth a thousand words. Her nannies at the orphanage loved her. We owe so much to them for the nurturing and care they gave her. Her Chinese name is FuYue and we have kept that in her name. The meaning of Fu is "happiness" and Yue means "Spiritual Pearl".

Date to Meet MeiLi

We finally got our in-China itinerary. We will be meeting MeiLi on Monday, September 8, 2008 ! We depart September 2 and return home on September 19. I will try to post an update every day during our traveling with photos and perhaps some video clips of our activities.

Consulate Appointment September 17th

Our Consulate appointment is set for September 17th in Guangzhou which is in Guangdong Province. Guangzhou will be our exit point from China. It is a very beautiful city.

We plan to stay at the White Swan hotel there, which is very accommodating to adoptive families. The Link to their website is

http://www.whiteswanhotel.com/ . We will have to do medical

checkups there with the other adoptive families and many other

processing appointments before we can bring MeiLi home.